How I Spent My Summer Vacation(s)

Road trips have always been my favorite type of travel for as long as I can remember. I came from a generation which spent a lot of our vacation time on the road, possibly because it was the cheapest form of travel, I don’t know. My earliest memories of family vacations involve packing up the big green Travel-all (the 70’s version of a Suburban/ Tank crossover,) and hitting the road. I’m sure it didn’t happen as often as I recall but it seems that every trip began with some disaster on the home-front, like the pipes bursting just as everyone was loaded in the car. Once that was resolved it was smooth sailing for all but the one with the useless bladder, me. Prepared as always, my mother had created amazing road-trip packages for each of us, filled with everything a child needed to survive a two or three (or fifty) hour journey. This was before hand-held video games and TV’s in cars. We had to amuse ourselves. There were games which involved getting little magnetic capsules in designated holes, paper-dolls, plastic dinosaurs, comic books and license plate bingo cards. Everyone had a plastic cup with a straw and lid too. I spent the early years being "the kid who had to pee", which is better than my later years as "the kid who had to throw up" (humans were not meant to travel facing backward in a station wagon with an antsy dog!) As a child I saw every toilet up and down the West Coast at one point or another.

After my parent's divorce, family travel became two very different experiences. Mom made marathon drives. We left before the sunrise so we could “sleep through the ugly parts.” She would choose the longer route with “more to look at.” I don’t see how the cows on Route 5 and Route 99 differ but apparently one was more aesthetically pleasing. If you have ever taken a road trip, anywhere in California, you will understand. No matter where you go, you end up looking at cows. Cows in the meadows, cows in the desert, cows by lakes, cows in the trucks that pass you on the highway. The entire state is cows, interrupted by the occasional horse. These back roads also crossed through more towns--for the girl who needed to pee all the time (even after I outgrew that phase.) The benefit was “look at the pretty town” the drawback was “do these backwater hicks drive 12 miles per hour ALL the time, or just when we come to town?” Traveling off the beaten track also means eating in some interesting locations. Thank God for the mass explosion of McDonald’s drive-thrus in the early 80’s!

Part of these marathon trips was the “we don’t stop till we get there” mentality. Once we were all piled in the car, we stopped for nothing (despite choosing the most bathroom littered piece of highway.) All stops slowed us down and cut into the “vacation” time. I finally learned the trick to get a little breather was to mention how sick the dog looked. We could always stop for the dog. This was the age where I was moved into the backward facing seat in the station wagon. The seat no air-conditioning reaches, so they would crack the back window filling the area with exhaust fumes. What a magical, braincell-killing journey. Then we hit the winding mountain roads which is when I earned my new reputation as the girl who gets car sick. Once as an adult with children of my own my mother cautioned which road I should avoid taking to visit her, “Don’t take the Feather River, you get carsick.” One time! And I was 7! But we were forever banned from taking that route again, because “Erin gets carsick.” Instead we took the longer, windier logging road, where only two wheels of our car were on the road at a time, and the logging trucks were happy to run us over or off the road, our choice. I never much cared for these trips because the focus was the destination and not the journey. We eventually got where we were going, but it almost always involved a lot of tears and at least one change of pants (because the dog threw up on me, not because I peed.)

Road trips with my Dad were the exact opposite: Windows down, forward facing, stereo blasting, open road and exploration. “Want to stop in this rinky-dink village for lunch?” “Let’s find somewhere strange and bizarre to get lost.” “When did we pass our turn off?” I have had the best adventures on these trips because the travel was part of the vacation. One of my best road trips with my Dad involved the rare airplane. I don’t do airplanes, but this was Europe, so…yeah. As a graduation gift my Dad gave me a whirlwind college tour of Europe. Not wanting to be alone I took my Dad and my brother and sister along. We traveled by bus from country to country and true to travel with Dad it was one heck of a trip. Or so I’m told. I would probably remember more of it had he not taught us all his college drinking games. I saw a lot of art and architecture, and the interior of a lot of hole-in-the-wall taverns. But I loved every minute and can’t wait to go back. One day. These trips were the ones where I truly developed my love of road tripping.

In my young adult life I adopted these practices for my own. Several road trips with girlfriends ended surprisingly well, with everyone alive, in one piece, and in the same place, although in the days before cell phones that was a much bigger accomplishment than you can imagine. One such trip involved traveling to Solvang and “just stopping at a hotel.” Who knew that in peek summer travel time someone would expect you to have made a reservation? We ended up in a crazy motel off the beaten track on some back road, trying to describe our location to the friend following us up later. She found us sometime in the wee hours of the morn, hopping mad and exhausted. But the trip was a success and provided long time memories which are just beginning to fade. These intrepid explorers were the same who joined me on a road trip to camp on the beach, where we judiciously left just before sunset and managed to pitch our tent in the sand in the pitch black, only to find we had chosen ocean front property when the tide came in that morning. Good times.

My last road trip with the group was when I was 5 months pregnant with my first. After that my trips became my own family vacations. Most of these have been trips to visit relatives and camping trips. My last hotel vacation may have been my honeymoon. Camping is still one of my favs as far as flexibility and fun, but I could stand a few more vacations that don’t involve sleeping in the dirt and peeing in the woods. We took a cruise a few years ago and that is an adventure one should get at least once in life. Traveling with my kids is a joyful, hysterical, and spontaneous experience. Now that the kids are older I have taken a road trip the last three summers with various groupings. I taught my oldest to drive on a road trip to Santa Cruz a few summers ago. The last two summers we have traveled to Reno to visit my Dad. We have eaten in dives; gotten lost on dark Deliverance-esque back-roads; seen the world’s finest “really awesome fresh beef jerky” money can buy; (but not eaten any because no jerky is worth $9 for 4oz!) and played pool in Sinatra’s Hotel straddling the border between two states. I hope these will be among their favorite memories with me. I know they are some of our best times together. Now when I pee my pants, it’s from laughing too hard.

Certain traditions will always remain: the circle around the block for whatever important item was forgotten and quickly remembered before we got too far; the item too far gone to return for, which someone will spend the rest of the trip pining over; the nail biting mechanical issue which makes everyone fearful of being stranded roadside as steam pours out into the thick, hot, afternoon air; the “are we there yet” and “let's get personal knowledge of every gas station restroom from here to Alaska”; the wild, exhausted roll from the car, overcome by excitement for your arrival, and depression that “this is it?” and “what do you mean we still have to set-up camp?” But seriously, is there any better way to travel? I think not.